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December 7, 2003, Alpen-scratch

12/7/03
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Posted by Sam Avaiusini on 12/7/03 12:44am
After Bill and I skied our brains out at Steven's on Saturday, I felt compelled to run up to Alpy's for at least a run down International.  Dale, Ron, Jimmy and I left the parking lot at about 10:00 and followed a well established skin track up to the top of 17 via Edelweiss.  Snow was pretty thick and sloppy until we reached the top of the Quad and then things got a lot lighter.  On top around 11:30, we hung out for a while eating and mingling under broken clouds.  By this time, several parties had arrived on top including one comprised of Sky, Corey and the Hummels.  Talk shifted to, "I think we should ski this..." or "I think we should ski that..."  
Our crew still opted for a run on International and so we dropped in.  I must say there are few times I've skied that run in better conditions.  Calf-to-knee deep fluff all the way down to lower international...very nice!  And of course, no bumps to bottom-out on.  Things started getting heavier, but still many good turns were had until we reached the top of Sessel.  Here it was time for figure 11s down to the car...necessary to keep up speed.  Back home by 1:30 so we could all be domestic ;D.
Good stuff for sure. I've never been to alpental and now that I've been there, I will be back. We ended up yo yoing the otherside for 4 runs (just the best stuff up high) of some of the best pow I've skied in a long time! Now, I just have to educate myself on the local BC once the ski resort opens. There looked to be some worthwhile climbs nearby...

Jason Hummel...

Jason, check out alpental.com for some great photos of the BC.

There looked to be some worthwhile climbs nearby....

I'm hoping it'll be a good year for ice, I'm getting stoked already!

alpental.com is the coolest thing I've seen since finding the photos of Jackson Hole BC.  Great tip!

yeah, it was a great day up there...Alpy is always a good time before the lifts start up and the crowds arrive (although the ski patrol had the edelweiss chair running sunday afternoon and were taking the easy way up).
It was a kick running into so many folks I had read trip reports from but never met in person.
International was about as good as it gets...I shoulda spent the day studying, but I'm sure glad I got out.

I had never heard about alpental.com before. When I go to the site, the pages behave really strangely. There appear to be links on the front page (History of Snoqualmie Pass, Virtual Mountain Tour, etc), but they are not really links for me - there's nothing to click. I looked at the page source to see what files the links point to, and I can view those pages by typing in their addresses, but then the links on those pages aren't really links either. Does this happen for anyone else? The site looks like it must be really great, but it will be very tedious for me to look through it.

Charles - weird.  The history links are just text when I view them (the links work fine), but the real thrill are the maps - these take a few secs to open up through the "virtual tour" link, but even on my home dial up they aren't too slow.  Working with the usual Microsoft suite, maybe it's your software to view this site that's messing things up?  

Isn't alpental.com the subject of some controversy?  I think the Alpe. patrol is not happy with it since its descriptions and directions makes the backcountry seem too friendly to novices and fools.  Being one of the later I'm headed up there right now ...

MW88888888, I am on a Mac, but since I'm using IE and the pages were made with Microsoft FrontPage (according to the page source), you'd think that shouldn't be a problem. When I got to the maps by looking up the file names from the pages sources and typing them in manually, I found that the links there did work for me. I can imagine that the ski area is not too thrilled about the site, but at least the entrance page to the maps section starts out with a BIG disclaimer and warning (the file for that page is even named "danger.htm"!).

Charles, the links work for my Mac (10.2.8, Safari).  If it'd help, I'll fire up my backup (9.x, IE) and give it a try.  I'm mainly just hanging around trying not to accomplish anything worthy, so let me know.  

Hank,

I doubt you're the target of Alpental patrol's ire (but they can speak for themselves) as the aware and cautious, like I presume you are, are not going into the BC without shovels, beacon probe etc and know-how.  I think the patrol has legitamate concerns because they invariably are the ones who have to clean up the "mess" when dingbats make mistakes.  (ah, but if we let the cops make all the rules...)  

About the web site - buyer beware, but an educated population is never bad. I'm not sure how Alpental treats BC access as I've yet to buy a lift ticket there (yet), but
I hope they do as the Canadians do - I'm for posting signs on ski lifts explaining the dangers of going BC and letting common sense be the dictum of BC access.  I point to the success of opening Jackson Hole's BC, a place that I would think would have much worse avalanche danger, as a model to all ski areas.  (and by "better" avalanche danger I only mean that I've found continental snowpacks to be much more spooky than the more rain soaked coastal packs.)

But realistically and personally, the only reason I care about ski area attitude toward backcountry skiers is because ski areas plow their roads the best (and earliest) and I hate confrontations when I cross ski area boundaries!


Charles,

Always an adventure with you and those computers of yours.


I hope I'm not revealing any *secret* information, but as I understand it, alpental.com was put together by year-round skier (and longtime Alpental regular) Danny Miller.  I think he just jumped on the name before Alpental thought to get it for themselves.  

As far as the patrol being mad at alpental.com they have their own map of the BC available on their website, it's a more of a drawing than photos, but still certainly quite useful.


http://www.avsp.org/BC_Map.html


Mark, thanks for the offer. Not essential, since it sounds like it may affect only a small percentage of the small percentage using Macs, but if you have time, I'd be interested to know the results...

I had no idea that alpental.com was Danny. I skied with him about a year and a half ago when he surpassed the known WA consecutive months record (106 at that time). Quite a coup to get that domain name! I'll have to write to him.

hmmmm -- maybe it was the patrol's bc map that was at issue?   I remember reading about how someone wanted to put a password on a page or something ... maybe on the alpental geek squad website?  can't recall and it doesn't really matter ...

I know several of the Alpy patrolers and they use the Alpental.com website- they told me about it.  I have both maps and I think the complement each other- it's hard to beat a picture. :)

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december-7-2003-alpen-scratch
Sam Avaiusini
2003-12-07 08:44:25